A New Resistive Belt Sensor for Multipoint Contact Detection of Robotic Wheels

Abstract

In this paper, a new, simple and cheap sensor is proposed to detect the multipoint contact of a typical robotic wheel. The new sensor empowers a wheeled robot to scan the surface and to find stability margins during real-time locomotion without camera or laser sensors. Furthermore, it enhances the ability of the real-time solution of the dynamic equations. The new sensor is based on the total resistance of a circuit and can be classified into two types. In the first type, the resistive circuit includes a conductive path, a direct voltage source and some resistors by various values. The main advantage of this type of the new sensor is to determine the exact locations of multipoint contact only by means of an input data detecting the voltage of a resistor. The implementation of the new idea is easy to use and to be experimented. It can be used to improve the control process, especially on the rough surfaces and to enhance the locomotion stability. The second type of the new sensor contains a continuous resistive belt with higher accuracy than the first type. The algorithm of the multipoint contact detection is explained and the kinematics relations of the robot are obtained. The surface is scanned during the robot locomotion, and the error of the estimated surface profile is calculated. Finally, the static stability margins are extracted using the new sensor data.

Wada K, Shibata T (2007) Social effects of robot therapy in a care house-change of social network of the residents for two months. In: 2007 IEEE international conference on robotics and automation, pp 1250–1255Google Scholar